superseded by new jargons, new camouflages. I have lived since in the world of overkill and second strike and negative capability; the scenarios of future wars or probably the final war are preceded by their distracting code-words. Speech regenerates itself like the landscape; words die and others are born, just as buildings melt away and others take their place, as the sand blew over the carcasses of the Matildas and the Honeys and the Crusaders.
I have seen Cairo since the war years and that time seemed to shimmer as a mirage over the present. The Hiltons and the Sheratons were real enough, the teeming jerry-built dun-coloured traffic-ridden deafening city, but in my head was that other potent place, conjured up by the smell of dung and paraffin, the felt-shod tittuping sound of a donkey’s hooves, kites floating in a Wedgwood blue sky, the baroque gaiety of Arabic script.
The place didn’t look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.
The terrace at Shepheard’s is packed. There is not a table free, and round each table crowd three, four, five chairs, each its own society; the noise is an orchestration of languages. The suffragis with their trays of drinks weave their way between the tables and Claudia stalks among them. Taking her time,ignoring the blandishments of a pair of tipsy South Africans, the stare of a Free French officer, invitations to join a friend here, a group of acquaintances there. She knows many of these people; the rest are defined for her by dress and speech. Each one wears the regalia of occupation, race and creed.
This is medieval, she thinks – why did I never think of that before? She notes the gold insignia encrusting the sleeve of a naval officer, the red-banded hat dumped by a brigadier on his knee, the conferring red fezzes at another table. This is a bang-up-to-date nineteen-forty-one medieval urban scene; a structured world in which you can see who everyone is. Those are two Sephardic Jewish ladies and that is a Sikh officer and there is a tribe of three from the home counties. That man knows how to fly an aeroplane and that one is trained to command tanks and that girl knows how to dress a wound. And over there if I am not mistaken is this chap who might wangle me a ride up to the front if I play it right.
She smiles – the glossy lipsticked smile of the times. She approaches his table – a neat figure in white linen, bright coppery hair, high-heeled red sandals, bare sunburned legs – and he rises, pulls out a chair, clicks his fingers at the suffragi.
And looks appreciatively at the legs, the hair, the outfit which is not the get-up of the average woman press correspondent.
At least it is to be assumed that that is what he was doing since he tried later to get me into bed, as the price for a place in a transport plane going up to the desert next day. I didn’t pay the price – or not quite – but I got the seat. I’ve no idea now what his name was; I see, vaguely, a ginger moustache and that dark brown leathery face they all had. He is neither here nor there – just some Ordnance chap who had clout when it came to transport – except that he is one of those vital hinges, the factor without which I would not have gone to Cyrenaica, would not have been in a truck that broke down, would not have been rescued from the middle of nowhere by two officers in a jeep one of whom…
Would not have sat in transcendent happiness on the terrace of the Winter Palace at Luxor, nor lain in misery in a hospital bed in Gezira,
I have seen Cairo since the war years and that time seemed to shimmer as a mirage over the present. The Hiltons and the Sheratons were real enough, the teeming jerry-built dun-coloured traffic-ridden deafening city, but in my head was that other potent place, conjured up by the smell of dung and paraffin, the felt-shod tittuping sound of a donkey’s hooves, kites floating in a Wedgwood blue sky, the baroque gaiety of Arabic script.
The place didn’t look the same but it felt the same; sensations clutched and transformed me. I stood outside some concrete and plate-glass tower-block, picked a handful of eucalyptus leaves from a branch, crushed them in my hand, smelt, and tears came to my eyes. Sixty-seven-year-old Claudia, on a pavement awash with packaged American matrons, crying not in grief but in wonder that nothing is ever lost, that everything can be retrieved, that a lifetime is not linear but instant. That, inside the head, everything happens at once.
The terrace at Shepheard’s is packed. There is not a table free, and round each table crowd three, four, five chairs, each its own society; the noise is an orchestration of languages. The suffragis with their trays of drinks weave their way between the tables and Claudia stalks among them. Taking her time,ignoring the blandishments of a pair of tipsy South Africans, the stare of a Free French officer, invitations to join a friend here, a group of acquaintances there. She knows many of these people; the rest are defined for her by dress and speech. Each one wears the regalia of occupation, race and creed.
This is medieval, she thinks – why did I never think of that before? She notes the gold insignia encrusting the sleeve of a naval officer, the red-banded hat dumped by a brigadier on his knee, the conferring red fezzes at another table. This is a bang-up-to-date nineteen-forty-one medieval urban scene; a structured world in which you can see who everyone is. Those are two Sephardic Jewish ladies and that is a Sikh officer and there is a tribe of three from the home counties. That man knows how to fly an aeroplane and that one is trained to command tanks and that girl knows how to dress a wound. And over there if I am not mistaken is this chap who might wangle me a ride up to the front if I play it right.
She smiles – the glossy lipsticked smile of the times. She approaches his table – a neat figure in white linen, bright coppery hair, high-heeled red sandals, bare sunburned legs – and he rises, pulls out a chair, clicks his fingers at the suffragi.
And looks appreciatively at the legs, the hair, the outfit which is not the get-up of the average woman press correspondent.
At least it is to be assumed that that is what he was doing since he tried later to get me into bed, as the price for a place in a transport plane going up to the desert next day. I didn’t pay the price – or not quite – but I got the seat. I’ve no idea now what his name was; I see, vaguely, a ginger moustache and that dark brown leathery face they all had. He is neither here nor there – just some Ordnance chap who had clout when it came to transport – except that he is one of those vital hinges, the factor without which I would not have gone to Cyrenaica, would not have been in a truck that broke down, would not have been rescued from the middle of nowhere by two officers in a jeep one of whom…
Would not have sat in transcendent happiness on the terrace of the Winter Palace at Luxor, nor lain in misery in a hospital bed in Gezira,
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